Learning about myself

Here I go again having recently had something happen but yet I was lame about blogging. I honestly have no idea why I do that. It’s not like stuff’s a big secret or I’m afraid or whatever. I mean, I’ll shamelessly wear my geese with stripes shirt in public. Hell, ya’ll should see what I wore over the weekend at the two book signings in Northern California.

[Wow! I just accidentally segued into what I’d set out to blog! COOL!]

There’ll be pictures up soon at ashleighraine.com but I’m not quite ready to post them yet. They need to be resized and stuff. Plus, I’m digging out from the pile of other, older updates that still need to be done.

Anyway, over this last weekend, Jennifer and I (and our great friend Donna) went up to Northern California for book signings in Monterey and Santa Clara. Special thanks to Borders Express because they’re awesome for having such a huge group of authors signing those two days!

Jen and I used those two signings as an excuse to stay at my parents’ house and visit with as many of our old friends as were around.

I could go on and on and on and on about how much fun we had at the signings and getting caught up with friends and all that excitement, but that’s not what I’d intended this blog entry to be about.

I wanna write about what I learned. I was rather surprised, too.

Y’know how you’ve got friends that you don’t see all the time, but whenever you talk to them it’s like you’d never lost touch…aside from all the ‘so whatcha been up to?’ catching up stuff? Then there’s the friends that are always around, but they tend to call you before you call them… And then there’s the friends that you always call first–whether it’s because you need their help or they’re just the person you need to talk to right then.

Well, all of the friends Jen and I were with fall into all of those categories. Our friendship range was diverse and we were all wishing the whole crowd was there, but happy with the crowd who made it.

Anyhow, at the end of the first night, my old friend Carrie was making a run up to the corner store for a few things and in passing, I’d thanked her for letting me tag along because I needed to “decompress”. She questioned what I meant and I replied that there are certain expectations of me when I’m out with Jen, etc. and that when I’m out with Carrie, those expectations aren’t the same.

At the time, I didn’t really ponder that thought, but later on, I totally did…And started to realize just how many personalities I have in certain situations–which got me realizing that it’s not conscious…and that they go along with the company I keep.

From there, I realized that I hang out with the people I hang out with–when I hang out with them–because of what they bring out in me. Seriously, if I want girltalk, I call Jen. If I want tomboy, crawling around at the junkyard, I call Eddie, the best man at Jason and my wedding. Obviously, I choose to hang out with my husband Jason the most, but still. I found the whole thing rather fascinating. Just in those three examples, there were three almost completely different ‘me’s. They all intersect, but are not limited to the same list of traits–some are louder than others.

Everyone probably does the same stuff without realizing it, but then I started wondering if there were facets of me I should put forth more often; which ones do I like more? Would it work to mix those facets…say, drag Jen to a junkyard or girltalk with Eddie? Probably not. And that’s what makes them unique and my friendships with them so wonderful. I dunno. To me, discovering this kind of stuff about myself is fascinating.

Of course, from now on, I’m gonna be analyzing the characters in my writing to see if they’re true to life in how they operate with other characters in their stories…see how they mesh and dive a helluva lot further into what makes them who they are and why. I geek on characters already, but this quantification will only make me geek harder and I think that’s awesome.

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